What came first, media or advertising?

On one hand, traditional media needs advertisers’ money to run its operations. On the other, advertising needs media so potential customers can see its business’ offerings. It’s not as complex an answer as the chicken and the egg, but the relationship is as interdependent.

In the case of social media, advertising came second. But as Snapchat’s recent sponsored selfie lens and YouTube’s addition of clickable ads of products in videos show, social media is finally figuring out how to monetize its content. It’s demonstrating that even though it showed up to the race second, the medium has pulled far ahead of traditional media in the competition for ad dollars.

When Snapchat first came onto the scene, it was pretty basic. The app was almost purely a communication system, one in which you could send timed photos to your friends. Then, over time, it added features such as “My Story” and “Discover.” It didn’t seem apparent at the time, and who knows if they meant to do it this way, but Snapchat was building a product that was advertiser-friendly.

The “Discover” feature is sponsored by numerous media companies that reportedly pay $100 for every 1,000 views the video gets. While that was a blatant integration of advertising, until recently, geotags haven’t appeared to be. One of the first cases of what I will now call ad-tags, was a graphic for “Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation.” Since then, there have been numerous ad-tags, and now selfie lenses are going to follow suit.

In the case of YouTube’s latest feature, viewers will be able to watch a video and buy a product that appears on the screen. It will be most relevant for tutorials and product reviews. That may not sound like much, but there are more than 1 million channels devoted to creating these types of videos, according to Google.

Both Snapchat and YouTube should be celebrated for finding innovative ways to present ads in a way that doesn’t ruin the user experience. As I have talked about before, that can be a tricky game to play.

Newspapers and other traditional media haven’t been so successful. Type in “Newspaper Layoffs” on Google, and the results speak for themselves. Layoffs and buyouts are becoming more frequent each day, and in some cases the companies that own these publications are losing tens of millions of dollars a year.

In all fairness, comparing social media with traditional media is a bit like comparing apples and oranges. Social media is built upon shared communication between users while traditional media is centered around a one-dimensional relationship in which storytellers tell and the listeners listen. Beyond letters to the editor, there’s little interaction between the two participants. And yet, it seems like traditional media should be able to figure out a better way to sell advertising space.

That’s not to say there haven’t been attempts. Ad walls and native advertising are two changes that have come about in recent years. But clearly, that isn’t enough.

The traditional media industry needs to push harder. It’s true that people don’t want to pay for content these days, but it’s also true that the platforms on which that content is available is more innovative than ever. Hyperlinks and embedded videos are valuable tools to advertisers as they can directly funnel traffic to the product they are selling.

The ethics of journalism should not be tossed aside in the pursuit of money, but things need to change if traditional media is going to survive. Social media companies don’t have to play within the same rules, but they’re kicking traditional media’s you-know-what when it comes to exploiting content.

Paul Sarconi is a junior broadcast and digital journalism major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at pjsarcon@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @paulsarconi.

Published on October 6, 2015 at 10:17 pm